Superstore bosses: "We knew early on that COVID would be an important part of the season"

Entertainment Weekly

The NBC workplace comedy will deal with coronavirus when it returns tonight for Season 6, its first episode since shutting down production early on Season 5. "We realized we wanted to see how our characters dealt with the early days of the pandemic: the uncertainty and changing information, the panicking hoarders, being called 'essential workers' but not really being treated as essential," showrunners Jonathan Green and Gabe Miller said in an email to EW. "Superstore has always been a show that tries to reflect what real people are dealing with in the real world, and COVID has obviously had a huge impact on the daily lives and work of store employees. So we knew early on that COVID would be an important part of the season, in big ways and small. Like real stores, everything will look and function a little differently. It’s an opportunity to put a spotlight on a group of people on the frontlines who often go underappreciated."

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• Ben Feldman says Superstore couldn't ignore coronavirus: "We all decided that it would be crazy irresponsible of us, a show that is tackling hot-button topics and the public and political and zeitgeist-y interest, if we just pretended that this massive, global, life-defining pandemic didn’t exist,” he says.
• Superstore bosses were thrilled that America Ferrera was doing two more episodes so she could exit with Episode 100: "I'm really glad that those things ended up lining up because it only felt right that America should be part of our 100th episode and celebrating that milestone," says co-showrunner Gabe Miller. "We were really excited when we found out we were going to be able to get her for two episodes this season and that she would be able to be part of things. Once we found that out, that that could be her farewell episode, it just became clear: Well, that is going to be the big event of the episode."
• Superstore show runners kept a Google Doc filled with coronavirus events, news items and policy changes that they could incorporate on the show